Guild Wars 2

What’s New?

So besides the core changes/removals, what has been added, what new can the Necromancer do. Not a lot actually.

Marks are new, and are honestly the one of the few things I can say about the Necro that I genuinely like. Condition landmines, neato.
Besides all looking identical, the only issue I have with them is that they are all restricted to the staff. I would of preferred if they were spread out among other weapons and that there were a few more of them.
I look forward to see more done with them, but so far so good.

Signets aren’t new, but their new versions are. I can’t really give the Necro any credit here, since most professions have the exact same type of skill.
The specific skills thou, are useful, thou not the most exciting skills in the world.
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Wells too are back, but instead of popping out from corpses, you just make the AOE DOT instead, which again is watered down. Long recharge, limited to one copy of each, it’s pretty lack luster.
Thou, some of the specific wells aren’t that bad. Well of Darkness and Corruption are neat, and have their uses.
I like the trait that chills when you blind foes, stuff like makes these skills more appealing. But overall, it has a bit to be desired.

Boon <-> Condition is more or less back from the first game, at least in spirit. I like these, I really like these. But again, their just isn’t a whole lot of it. I’d like to see these being expanded in the future.

Corruptions are back, just with a name now. It’s fine, just not overly exiting.
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Other then Marks, Spectral skills are actually new, but unlike Marks they don’t really have anything unique onto themselves. They don’t have a theme or anything besides name alone, just a slight bent towards Life Force and a few conditions, both of which are a dime a dozen.
So their a big lot of bugger all. Specific ones might be useful from time to time, but as a genre they are lacking.
Idk why Arenanet bothered to name them.
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Weapons

I should probably touch on these.
I my opinion, half the weapon skills just don’t feel right, they don’t seem to have much of anything to do with Necromancy. It’s Necrotic in name only.
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Staff
Probably the only weapon I like, again because of the Marks. Auto-attack is dull and lifeless thou.

Axe
Eh, I just can’t get into this weapon. I think Unholy Feast is cool, but the first two skills just don’t scream Necromancer to me. I don’t know what it is.

Scepter
This one feels a like more Necro, even if conditions are underwhelming, it has the right spirit. I just find it’s bloody hard to kill anything with this weapon.

Dagger MH
Um, besides Life Siphon, what on earth does this weapon have anything at all to do with Necromancy? I mean if there was more Life Stealing, ok, alright, now we’re having a conversation, but as is, bah, worthless.

Dagger OH
Actually pretty cool, I’m perfectly happy with this one.

Focus
Also good, quite Necromancary, Spinal Shivers is esp good.

Warhorn
It’s meh, the daze is incredibly bland and just isn’t very useful. (at least not in general PvE)
The locusts are ok, but nothing spectacular and don’t make up for the lackluster daze.
Long recharges too, it just doesn’t compare to the other offhands.

Underwater Weapons
No one cares.
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In Closing

Overall, I despise the Necromancer. It could have been so great, it this is not what I wanted, not even close. It doesn’t improve on ANYTHING, but regresses instead.

While in the case of Minions, weapon skills and Death Shroud, these are issues that can be dealt with, improved and altered without having to add all the much to the game.
Blood Magic and esp Curses on the other hand, just don’t exist in any tangible way that you can do much of anything with, you’d basically have to add a bunch of new skills and mechanics in order to realize them, which I don’t see Arenanet doing any time soon, if at all.

For shame Arenanet.

All in all, everyone is dumber for having played it, I award you no points, and may Grenth have mercy on your soul.

~Yoh

I don’t mind the axe being there, only that with such an awful auto-attack and then two utilities, it should have just been an off-hand with no auto at all. The animation does seem a little lacking though, which to some extent I think of dagger’s auto-attack as well, but who even sees that tiny little weapon anyway…

Life transfer especially feels very meek to me. I didn’t play GW1 so I’m not familiar with what it was there, but seeing the traits and handful of skills necro has made me think I’d be able to actually build around that… which I suppose I can, but there’s no functional reason I’d want to. I hoped it would be the sort of thing where I can ‘steal’ an amount of the damage I do in health, which is always fun because of the weird and often inverted way it scales, where you’re better facing a few enemies at a time than one (like the hostile equivalent to altruistic healing), but instead I simply get health when the skill does something.

And I definitely agree on DS as well, I completely utterly hate the way it’s so limited. No matter what weapons I have, no matter what my build is or what my strategy may be… same stale-cardboard flavoured skill bar… ugh.

I, like you, almost always play the summoner classes, particularly if they can support as well. In Guild Wars 1, I also gravitated more toward Ritualist, but played Necromancer and also a Mesmer (after the big changes). I miss the Ritualist more than I can express, primarily for aesthetic reasons, but also because of versatility. And therein is the reason I went Ritualist over Necromancer.

The main reason I didn’t main necromancer? Conditional abilities. Sure, minion master was tons of fun, but you needed corpses. Blood magic and curses were great… when they worked. There were far FAR too many skills that just flat-out didn’t work unless a special condition was fulfilled. Needing fleshy enemies for certain abilities like disease, and corpses for minions, and even some curses only worked on certain enemies (weaken armor just lowered armor to 60, which was the same rank every caster had, so it was useless on them).

To a certain extent, I hear what you are saying and agree. Blood magic… well, while you can trait to drain life with other abilities, you can’t really build around it effectively (although the latest patch seems to suggest they are working on it). Curses is very watered down as well, but that’s because it doesn’t exist in Guild Wars anymore. There is no build that focuses on debuffing, or buffing for that matter. No matter what you do in the game, even traited to primarily heal or debuff, or whatever, that is NEVER the only thing you do. Minion masters are a fantastic example, as you said, “Summoning wasn’t just side gig, it was your job.” In GW2 You can fill your entire bar with minions, but those weapon slots can’t summon. You WILL be doing something other than just focusing on minions. I like this aspect.

When it comes to soul reaping, I have to say, it actually hurts your case more than helps it. It was passive, basic, and utterly powerful to all necromancers everywhere. I actually have a friend that ran a build as a necromancer/elementalist and debuffed with a curse or two, and then nuked things to death and never ran out of energy. I like that the new soul reaping line isn’t taken by all necromancers. What’s the point of different trait lines if everyone takes the same one for every build?

I’m the guy that likes to specialize. My motto is normally “whatever you do, be the best at it.” But that playstyle doesn’t exist anymore in Guild Wars; you can’t specialize so completely that you don’t have other options at the same time.
This may not be the game for certain playstyles anymore, but it’s something I have really enjoyed, in spite of myself.

TL;DR: having only a single job that didn’t always work was a problem for the old Guild Wars necromancer. That problem doesn’t exist anymore and a playstyle of specializing in only doing cetain thing is gone. I find it to be more fun that way.

Ramiah.5648:

Minion masters are a fantastic example. You can fill your entire bar with minions, but those weapon slots can’t summon. You WILL be doing something other than just focusing on minions. I like this aspect.

Yes… like cursing at the little ones to attack something or at the least stand near it so you can make them explode, and yelling for the bone fiend to stop trying to tank things with its face. Then there’s that little death-rat-thing, which tries so hard to be meaningful in the short time it has, but… no. T__T

Seeing as lifeforce is built from the death of enemies and allies around you, i kinda thought that minions would play a bigger part in the combat style of the necromancer.

Not simply (you gain lifeforce for ability) but instead (ability summons a minion that does x damage over x seconds then dies) upon dieng you receive life force for its death.

This is what i expected it to be, similiar to the mesmer in making clones to generate its weird play style, the necromancer would get atleast 1 summon ability on each weapon skill.

I think this was a great oppurtunity to capitalize on what everyone wanted from the necromancer…a summoner. Even if those summons were partly there just to die.

Anyway, i think it was a big loss. Also deathshroud i agree in it taking away options instead of giving you more. its a design flaw, and it’ll probably be along time before they ever fix it (if they ever fix it). If they dont, eq next around the corner, and it will no doubtedly have a necromancer, and i loved eq 1 and 2’s necromancer. I know where i’ll be if this game doesnt get its crap together by then.

Before I comment on this, let me polite point out that this thread is about necro in GW2 behing UNFUN to play. This has nothing to do with L2P. As the original poster said he couldn’t care less how powerful or how weak necro is. This thread is PURELY about GW2 necro being UNFUN to play when compared to GW1 necro. So please everyone stay on topic.

Other “useless” comments include things like “go play another profession”. This adds nothing to the discussion. This doesn’t change the fact (or falsehood) of whatever GW2 necro is UNFUN when compared to GW1 necro. So once again please stay on topic.

I too am a GW1 necro veteran. I was there from the beginning of GW1. I tried pretty much every single necro build available over the years. There were tons of fun and unique builds that I designed and tried.

Dark Aura Bomber was one of my favourite build for PvE hard mode. It is not as dangerous as it sounds, once you get the hang of it.

Ever tried Melandru’s Resilience with Foul Feast? I did and it worked great.

Minion Death Nova bomber aren’t complete unless you add Ancestors’ Rage to it. Even level 32 overpowered mobs goes WTF and quickly joins my ever expanding minion army. And once in a while that Spirit Rift also hits.

And all these were alongside the “common” builds like Spiteful Spirit, MM and Blood is Power, of course.

My necro was unorthodox. She was totally suicidal. She use insane “forbidden” magics to destroy her enemies. She would sacrifice absolutely everything, and take the maximum risk, for that tiny ounce of extra power. She was absolutely crazy and that’s why I loved her. ^^

In GW2 necros took a huge hit in the department of build creativity, on an epic scale. The new necros has zero creativity. Everything has been enclosed to a tiny box, relatively. Yes there are a few different builds, traits, utilities and weapons option. But it aren’t at all comparable, not even 1/20th, when compared to the GW1 necro.

Lore:

It seems “The Order” from GW1 (e.g. The Order of Necromancer) has totally killed the necromancer profession. All the new students of necromancy in GW2 were so “scared” of breaking any rules that they lost all creativity. None of the necro skills in GW2 were that interesting to use. “The Order” killed Ascalon by limiting dark magic, and now they are killing the necromancer profession as a whole. This only leads to one possible result:

The necromancers got demotivated (weak fighting ability) and went to the gym instead (e.g. got more health), since going to gym doesn’t break any rules from “The Order”.

You know I speak the truth. If we lower the necromancer’s health down to the elementalists’ or mesmers’ level, and also remove Death Shroud, the necromancer would be totally useless. The GW2 necromancer, WITHOUT their high health and DS, simply aren’t as efficient fighting machines as elementalists and mesmers. So the necro’s DS and high health AREN’T strengths of the necro. They are BURDENS. Burdens and excuses for “The Order” to continue to suppress the necromancy profession and their skills.

When oh when my fellow necromancers? When would you rebel against “The Order” to reclaim your former glory? We used to, 250 years ago, wield power beyond your wildest dreams today. We used to be able to keep a foe weaken 24/7 by using this skill “Enfeeble” every 5 seconds, which weren’t even an elite skill. We used to be able to kill the strongest boss in seconds with “Spoil Victor”. When would you rise up to reclaim your true potential, and put those overconfident elementalists and mesmers back to their place?

Back to reality:

Designing and testing unorthodox builds were a huge part of my FUN back in GW1. That was totally taken away from me. To say that I am “disappointed” would be a vast understatement.

Another huge disappoint for me is how reliant the necro is on DS and their high health for profession identity. Without DS and that high health, the necro would be “nothing”. Nothing as in nothing UNIQUE. Look for the truly UNIQUE factors of the necro without DS and high health, things that only a necro can do. Where are they?

(to be continued)

Sorry but this is useless topic what so ever.

If u are not complaining about necromancer beeing bad but only oh him as a class beeing unfun you can then go and complain about half of a stuff in your life.

I find many things unfun. Pop Music,Low budged teenage movies, Terrible designed cars and even boring looking beer cans. But someone actually likes it for some unknown reasons and thats their choise.

Yes , necro isint as entertaining as he was in gw1 but none of the classes are because of simplistic design anet adopted. From Creative gameplay ( and thats apply to any class ) they switched to locked few-viable-build game play.

Look at elementalist! those poor kittens have 1 single viable build now! LOL . Even necros have more.

Personally necro is 1 out of 4 toons i have on 80 and 1 out of 2 toons i use. He is only toon i do spvp on. I used to do that on ranger but now spv kitten warned by them and i find 0 interest in playing over-used class.

nice little thing i use to do to ( wars , dervs , paragons , assassins ,rangers , )

Enfeeble + Insidious parasite = Fun watching them kill themselves as they heal me for lulz .

smart people who knew they had that on themselves would either remove the curse / disease or take a time out because they were not allowed to attack me if they wanted to live .

(continue)

Being unique is very important. Back in GW1 necro could truly life steal and play life/power balancing by sacrificing health. Necro could apply hexes to mess up the enemies and apply cover hexes to “protect” the important hexes. Necros were “true” minion masters and no other profession even comes close at that. Necros truly gets stronger as they kill their foes. To top that off Necros gots tons of creative builds to design and test.

All of that were replaced by DS, high health and slightly better condition spreading. Yup that’s about it these 3 things. And condition spreading is, sorry to say, just another way to deal damage or prevent damage, so it isn’t even that unique. You have to understand that back in GW1 necros got skills like Enfeeble and Spoiled Victor. These kind of damage dealing and preventing is nothing new or unique to us. In fact, in many ways, we were better with those back then.

GW2 life stealing is nothing compared to GW1’s. In GW1 one single Vampiric Gaze steals about 10% health from a level 20 enemy. In GW2 that’s about 1,500-2,000 health stolen. How many hits does life siphon take to do that kind of life stealing? 40 hits to 54 that’s what.

As a GW1 veteran necro myself, I truly sympathize with the original poster. It seems that we lost so much from GW1, and gained so little in GW2. I mean of course we got new skills in GW2. But nothing really stands out powerful enough or unique enough to replace those that we lost from GW1. The gameplay itself of GW2 might be balanced. But being FUN and UNIQUE has NOTHING to do with the game balance. And that’s why I can see a lot of GW1 necros being, at least slightly, disappointed. A lot of GW1 necros has “deep roots” for those “old” playstyles, and the GW2 necro is very very different, for better or worst.

I mean changes are good. But those changes must be unique and cool enough that it totally overshadows the old versions. Like thief got stealth. Mesmer got clones. Eles got teleport. That sort of thing. If not, the veteran players would want to go back to the old version. And when they can’t, they will be disappointed and mad.

Long story short, any GW1 veteran necro that doesn’t enjoy the new DS system and high health would be very disappointed with the GW2 necro. Because nearly none of what they had before in GW1 were re-implemented in GW2.

Hope I am making sense. And I hope new GW2 players, who has never played GW1, can get an understanding of what us GW1 veteran necros are sometimes going though.

Designing and testing unorthodox builds were a huge part of my FUN back in GW1.

So much this. The sheer amount of things a Necromancer could do was staggering. They weren’t all equally effective, sure, but I’d say the class had some of the most synergistic and overall useful abilities in the game.

Masochism + Wastrel’s Touch/Dark Pact touchspam build.
Life Transfer regen/degen build.
Blood is Power mana batteries.
Death nova MM bombers, sometimes supplemented with ritualist abilities.
Virulence/Fragility spike
Lingering Wounds/Suffering HA debuffers
Classic Spiteful Spirit nuker
Well Support builds
Foul Feast/Plague Signet/Plague Sending condition sponge builds

Ahhh… the good old times.

Yep… the fun part is dead on. So is the fact that a lot of things gw2 necro has are not necromantic in any way shape or form. Mainly weapons but a good chunk of abilities too…
This is like going from morrowind with complete freedom to do anything you bloody want. Make a spell that blows up a town… or makes anything it hits a powerless(statless) bag of meat on a floor, enchant pants to shoot fireballs… enchant rings to summon constant summons, spend weeks making an absurdly powerful potion that lasts for 6000 hours… and then get hit with skyrim… sure it looks fancy but all the creativity was flushed down the toilet and you are left with beautiful but hollow world that never makes a lasting impression. At the end of the day you are simply left with that feeling of “Yeah I was there…” not the feeling that makes your eyes sparkle and you spewing a torrent of things that makes you look like a kid at a toy store.
Bland… that’s the name of the game.

I don’t remember the last time I logged into the game. I don’t remember the last time I logged onto this forum. I come here an lurk about once week or so. Reading through this post, I had to comment.

I believe ANet should hire the OP as a consultant. I completely agree with just about everything he said.

I have never bothered to respond to any of these complaining posts before, but you make alot of good points there sir and i couldn’t agree with you more. From the beginning of GW2 i’ve been so dissapointed with the necro class which i loved so much back in GW1, all i can do at this point is to keep sticking with it in hopes of some changes coming up the road.

Don’t get me wrong, the class is still one of my preferences. Still just a few changes to the minion and life siphon systems would be appreciated a whole lot just to bring some of the reasons the class used to be loved so much by a bunch of players back to the game.

@YOH: I just logged in to express my enthusiasm in seeing another person who thinks EXACTLY what i do, and plus, had enough time and force to write it all in a topic.
Total respect for you, you have my support.
Whoever talks in opposition to your hopinion just doesn’t deserve attention.
LET’s ADD MORE “LIKES” TO MAKE ANET POINT OUT THIS TOPIC

i completely agree OP. I want to like the necro so bad, but I just can’t. It was so awesome in gw1… I just don’t understand how they could muck it up so bad?! I keep hoping for a big balance patch to make sweeping changes to the class, but I know that won’t come this year. At the earliest, when the expansion is released. :\

I am really surprised to hear all of this, truth be told.
I think it comes down to this: When I play a game, I want to play in a way I have the most fun. I find minions to be fun. I find Debuffing and supporting a team to be fun. In Guild Wars 1, sometimes I couldn’t do what I wanted because I needed corpses or fleshy enemies or high armor enemies.
So, I had to play a build I didn’t want to- I ran the Spiteful Spirit build or some other thing. Basically, I played something that was NOT fun in order to get back to a place I could start having fun again.
I love LOVE the new necromancer. I can summon minions whenever I want. Are there issues that need fixing? Sure. But almost all aspects of the game can be played the way that is most fun for me. Plus, my friends see me coming from a mile away with my small army of undead- no corpses necessary. And wells, oh my goodness, wells. Something I can place wherever I want that does damage and blinding or condition/boon removal so I can DPS and support my team at the same time? Yes please.
Thank you Arenanet, for finally giving me a game where I can play the classes I like in a way I enjoy all the time.

So, am i the only person who thought lifeforce (which you gain from the death of things) to be built up off disposable short duration pets on weapon attacks (like mesmer phants) instead of abilities that just say (gives X lifeforce). Or is that just me?

Honestly i’m fine with not needing corpses (we need one for our minion trait) but simply saying ability gives X lifeforce is very boring where you could have had (just an example) axe 2nd ability replaced with a ghoul that leaped out and did a frenzy attack then died shortly after giving you lifeforce.

EQ2’s necromancer had stuff like this, and it was awesome.

I can appreciate some of the complaints here. I played a necromancer a ton in GW1, and it was a lot of fun. I really understand some of the points of the GW2 system being slightly watered down in comparison, but that is just as much because we have at most 10-15% of the skill options.

Many of the problems you outlined from a point of view of fun, were taken out due to gameplay. While the Hex system had some depth (it wasn’t that deep, you just learned to rotate your hexes), the problem with having tons and tons of hexes is that anyone new to the game needed to learn dozens and dozens of debuffs that were all different. Also they could have much less hex removal because we had dedicated healers whose job it was to keep us healed, as opposed to now its much more our job to take care of ourselves.

All corpse based skills were removed because in a new game with fairly limited skill choice, skills need to be useful in as many aspects of the game as possible. Corpse based skills, however, are noticeably crap in high level PvE (where things don’t drop left and right), and smaller PvP (same deal), and then often too strong in the areas with tons of corpses. In GW1 this was fine, you still had 500+ skills that had nothing to do with corpses if you were in those areas, here if minions and wells needed corpses, that is 20% of our arsenal that is absolutely useless in big parts of the game.

Minions were changed for a similar reason; they were useless in smaller PvP and PvE, and then insanely strong in some PvE and PvP. It really had little play-counterplay as well. An MM was pretty terrible without minions, and so had very little play to help themselves besides leech off teammates. Then once they got minions, and had their time to play, counterplay was incredibly hard; god forbid you ever face one 1v1 and find yourself respawning before you even got a chance to fight.

I won’t go into everything else specifically, basically they had to leave certain gameplay mechanics behind for various reasons. I’ll agree that I miss some of them, and that at times the Necromancer doesn’t feel as “Necromancer-y” as in GW1, but I do see the reasons why they had to make some changes.

There is a sliver of health sacrifice still in the game, in the form of the self-inflicted bleed from blood is power. But beyond that the concept is indeed pretty much gone. Now if Life Force had picked up some of that slack…

+1 for OP, well said

I’ve been trying really hard to get my necromancer to the level of my crit meditation guardian and I’m frustrated to say the least. Nothing goes together and no matter what I do, the class just feels extremely clunky. Am I the only one who feels like this?

Chasing down opponents with aa’s, using utilities to make up for damage, relying on DS when we are burst or controlled all add up to awkward feeling one gets when playing this class and that’s without delving into the traits. The feeling like a lot of necromancers skills have little to do with necromancy when compared to the first game is just icing on the very large displeasure cake.

I’ve stopped experimenting with the class once I reached a spectral build, since it’s the closest thing I’ve gotten to having fun (and a lot at that). But the weapon skills and cd’s has me waiting to see what anet’s next move for the class is.

Necromancer is no longer what it was. It’s compltely different. Death shroud is actaully a very unique and useful mechaning. I play dagger/dagger, and i use a gap closer utility. I can get in, deal some damage, then when i get lwo, refresh all my health and run away. Or use the lfe siphone thing (4) to make cool plays at low health, and barly winning fights. I would like the summoning to be improved, and a bit more self utility instead of all conditions on weapons would be nice, but necro is not an un-fun class. It isn’t a classic ncro anymore thoguh, it’s the legit definition of necrmoancer. Life-mage. Not death mage.

Sooooooo no one here used sr to spam evas – ymlad, fh with ap? ^.^
But seriously Anet made this class a shadow of its former self. Insane recharges, no energy management is an excuse, now the only thing we manage is the kitten system that is dodging. Rolling around in an aoe definitely means in invincible to the poison cloud or raining meteors… To anyone who thinks death shroud is good, then you obviously have not played gw1 or were incompetent in it. Its a 1 trick pony thats a gimmick done by anet to justify necromancer’s f1 key. OP nailed it on the head, pretty much everything the necro was… is gone. MM is effectively dead, I don’t want minions to act like pets, I want minions to freaking act like minions, ai is fine, give me 10 of them now.

The Death Shroud section struck me the most. I haven’t realized it myself but it’s so true. Death Shroud limits us rather than expands our possibilities. I ALWAYS wait to use death shroud until I’m about to die, you know why? Because it’s not gonna help me kill my enemies. It’s there to get me out of a bad situation so I can run away and get back to do useful things again. I think that’s a huge problem. We should feel compelled to use Death Shroud for extra options and burst. Right now we can’t do kitten while we’re in death shroud.

Ramiah.5648:

I am really surprised to hear all of this, truth be told.
I think it comes down to this: When I play a game, I want to play in a way I have the most fun. I find minions to be fun. I find Debuffing and supporting a team to be fun. In Guild Wars 1, sometimes I couldn’t do what I wanted because I needed corpses or fleshy enemies or high armor enemies.
So, I had to play a build I didn’t want to- I ran the Spiteful Spirit build or some other thing. Basically, I played something that was NOT fun in order to get back to a place I could start having fun again.
I love LOVE the new necromancer. I can summon minions whenever I want. Are there issues that need fixing? Sure. But almost all aspects of the game can be played the way that is most fun for me. Plus, my friends see me coming from a mile away with my small army of undead- no corpses necessary. And wells, oh my goodness, wells. Something I can place wherever I want that does damage and blinding or condition/boon removal so I can DPS and support my team at the same time? Yes please.
Thank you Arenanet, for finally giving me a game where I can play the classes I like in a way I enjoy all the time.

I understand that you prefer the GW2 necro over GW1 necro. It might fit your playstyle better. But you have to understand that we are no longer necros. This might sound crazy, but hear me out.

You missed the point on why we GW1 veteran necros are disappointed with GW2 necro: The GW2 necro is just like anyone else.

GW2 minions aren’t necro minions anymore. They are just summons. A lot of other classes also have summons. Other than numbers and effects there is absolutely nothing different between minions and, let’s say, elementals and pets and turrets.

GW2 wells aren’t necro wells anymore. They are just nukes. A lot of other classes also have nukes. Other than numbers and effects there is absolutely nothing different between wells and, let’s say, Firestorm and other nukes.

Condition spread is just another method to deal damage or prevent damage. There is nothing really unique about that.

It is this lack of unique profession identity that is the most disappointing for a lot of us. We are not necros anymore. We are just another class that summon stuff and nuke stuff. There is nothing necro about us.

Death shroud is defintly the thing that worried me the most when i started playing, no depth to it you get what you get and the ekstra hp buffer must mean balance for the class would make alot of things feel lackluster and they did.

Death shroud should be encourages to use no matter what spec you use it is our class mechanic. Its the same lame problem warriors have alot of their specs dont encourage players to use their class mechanic instead you have 2 adept traits that encourage you to do the opposite and just fill the adrenaline and ignore it because of the passive bonus it applies instead.

But yeah necro might be balanced strong / weak but also the most (for me atleast) unfun because of the insane amount of stuff that make no sense and a class mechanic that feels forced upon the class and remove any identity that the class could have had.

Yoh.8469:

Underwater Weapons
No one cares.
-
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In Closing
~Yoh

Actually, except for staff, these are the only current necro weapons i care about, because they are… well necromancerish? Cold, poison, a ton of planktons that eat flesh, a ton of shrimp that eat flesh, a giant tombstone on a chain, black scythe attack that spins you around like a chara in Soul Eater does, etc.

Also we are Necro- theme/Illus Mesmer/Form Dervish/Aoe zone control Ritualists now.

Oh good, it’s not just me then.
Although this is the response I expected, as it was the same response when I said the same thing back in beta.

Thanks CHIPS, you got the general idea and spirit of what I was talking about.

Ramiah, hey if you enjoy it, fantastic, I applaud that. And I totally agree that getting pigeon holed in one thing and one thing only isn’t very fun for most of us, and that being able to do a bit of everything is great.
Heck, you should see my Mesmer.
But in the case of minions, some of us would like to have a more involved role in their usage other then just summoning them. But the support skills are just not there. (minor aside for the staff)

And to Bhawb’s point as well, I totally understand WHY things had to change, why certain mechanics like corpses had to go, and that it makes some thing more approachable and easier to learn, I get all that.

But my point still stands, that in the transfer these unique mechanics that gave the Necromacer it’s identity were lost, and more importantly not replaced with anything that carried the same spirit.
The new Necro by in large doesn’t take advantage of many of the new mechanics of the game, unlike other professions do.

For example Wells, without corpses, they are only AOE DOT’s. And these are a dime a dozen. If they were instead, AOE DOT’s that came from an enemy your cursed, and went where they went, damaging their allies if they got too close, then that would be a horse of a different color.
That would have nuance.

Lastly Andele, that was more of a joke.
I actually quite like the underwater weapons, but I generally like underwater combat period. Kind of wish their were larger bodies of water where we had to do UW combat more often, like a water zone.

SamIAm.6198:

Necromancer is no longer what it was. It’s compltely different. Death shroud is actaully a very unique and useful mechaning. I play dagger/dagger, and i use a gap closer utility. I can get in, deal some damage, then when i get lwo, refresh all my health and run away. Or use the lfe siphone thing (4) to make cool plays at low health, and barly winning fights. I would like the summoning to be improved, and a bit more self utility instead of all conditions on weapons would be nice, but necro is not an un-fun class. It isn’t a classic ncro anymore thoguh, it’s the legit definition of necrmoancer. Life-mage. Not death mage.

DS and high health aren’t bad. The problem though is that necro MINUS their DS and high health is very weak. None of their weapons and utilities can fight other professions on a equal footing.

Imagine that you use your necro in a 1v1 or zerg vs zerg fight. Add a rule that you cannot use DS. And also add a rule that your max health is halved (or roughly the same health as your enemy). Would you stand a chance under these rules? Not much if you are fighting against someone at your skill level.

Why not? Well necro skills are all underpowered and unimaginative, intentionally, for game play balance.

I said this before, but I feel that DS, high health and Epidemic are the three things that are burdens for the necromancers. Because of these 3 things, the necromancer is underpowered and unimaginative in everything else.

Each time someone post a reasonable recommendation, either due to underpower or unimaginative of the skills, they get the answer: “But necro got DS, high health and Epidemic! If they get buffs the class would be unbalanced.”

The sad truth is, yes the class might indeed be unbalanced. If the necro skills can be on a equal footing as other professions, the necro would win because they got DS and high health.

Anet really got to look for a balance here. They got to find a balance between game balance and fun+ creativity+being unique.

I said it before and I will say it again. I would gladly take a nerf to DS, high health and Epidemic if it means all other necro skills would be buffed, or overhaul to make them more imaginative and unique. Epidemic was recently nerfed to the ground in WvW. So I hope to see those changes in the near future.

Yoh.8469:

And to Bhawb’s point as well, I totally understand WHY things had to change, why certain mechanics like corpses had to go, and that it makes some thing more approachable and easier to learn, I get all that.

But my point still stands, that in the transfer these unique mechanics that gave the Necromacer it’s identity were lost, and more importantly not replaced with anything that carried the same spirit.
The new Necro by in large doesn’t take advantage of many of the new mechanics of the game, unlike other professions do.

For example Wells, without corpses, they are only AOE DOT’s. And these are a dime a dozen. If they were instead, AOE DOT’s that came from an enemy your cursed, and went where they went, damaging their allies if they got too close, then that would be a horse of a different color.
That would have nuance.

I completely agree that we did lose certain things in the transition, especially the more obvious ways that we felt truly “Necro”-y, and while I think the new Necromancer mechanics still have a feel, it isn’t nearly as prevalent as GW1. Death Shroud definitely feels necro, many conditions feel necro, but just not in the same way that we did in GW1. Its unfortunate, although I do think the game is better off in many respects because of it, but the Necro of GW2 and the Necro of GW1 are quite different.

digiowl.9620:

There is a sliver of health sacrifice still in the game, in the form of the self-inflicted bleed from blood is power. But beyond that the concept is indeed pretty much gone. Now if Life Force had picked up some of that slack…

And here I thought that was just for when I needed my heal to work better and had no conditions. :P

+100 to the OP.

Give me back my blood Necro!

Anet flushed nearly everything that was unique and class-defining about the Necro in GW1 down the toilet with their implementation in GW2. Definitely nowhere near as fun, challenging, versatile, or complex.

The one thing I will give them credit for is giving Necros the option to engage in melee in GW2. Oh, the possibilities! Sadly, even the potential this offered was largely wasted.

It’s cool, though. All come to Grenth, in the end, to answer for their sins.

I’m still fairly new to GW2, and I can’t say that I’ve ever played GW1… however, it didn’t take me long to see that Necromancers were the blandest profession. The weapon skills were probably the only ones in the game that I wasn’t excited for at all after unlocking them. Minions feel uninspired. Death Shroud was fun for about 10 minutes. I would probably be fine with the latter 2 if the weapons were actually interesting/synergistic.

It’s almost funny though, I just got done going through pretty much the exact same thing in World of Warcraft as what you more experienced folk are talking about here in this thread: Warlocks, one of my favorite classes, received an overhaul going into the Mists of Pandaria expansion. Thing is, the playstyle that made the class fun and unique is now gone. I won’t go into a rant here, that’s for another time and another forum, haha. But, suffice it to say, I was extremely disappointed and no longer desired to continue playing my warlock.

Too bad then, that GW2’s warlock equivalent (roughly, as I know Death Knights could be considered the closest class, at least in theme) is in the same boat. After Blizzard’s track record, I am reluctant to start trusting any developer teams any time soon… but I hope for the sake of the profession that it gets a serious look from the proper design perspective.

+ 1 to op and chips i agree with both you guys. I think if they made fear a necro only condition and just slighty buffed it, reduced the cooldown or added another fear with a long cooldown(just one of these options) it would add uniqueness to the necro. also, if deathshroud had more than 4 skills while in it, it would be a more interesting mechanic to use, without making it OP ofc :]

Yeah, I went back to gw1 a few months back, was like “wow, this FEELS like a necromancer”

+ 1

i like the necro in gw2. bite me.

I agree fully. When I picked Necromancer in this game, I expected to feel a sinister thrill. I expected to see my team begin to win even though they were dying, to turn kills into curses for my enemies. To make death do my bidding, as a Necromancer should. I was highly disappointed. Necromancer is awful. Simply, purely, awful.

Fear should’ve been an exclusive condition for Necro (like confusion for Mesmer). It should’ve been based around that, summoning, and brought back hexes.

But no, now a bloody Dog can fear longer than us (Ranger Wolf fear).

I have never played GW1 and probably never will. But this post makes necro’s seem sad and depressing and all out terrible to play. they are not. the staff attacks are all AoE’s, most people find this annoying in a 1v1 situation, however these attacks are largely condition based and will allow to get away from your attacker with speed. The other weapons are, TBH, not very well thought out so I won’t reference any. But you said that the necro in GW1 could have an army not just a handful of minions. do you seriously want this in WvW… or even PvE? a necro would completely ruin your fun by simply getting themself and army and destroying everything in front of it. They may not be the best class or may not be anywhere close to the original guild wars… but does that really mean that they are terrible and kitten and are not worth play?

the past 200ish years has made necros soft they are not hardcore minion masters/exploding, lords of the underworld but i don’t care i still like em.

plus tbh if they stayed exactly the same as gw1 necros A-net wouldn’t exactly moving forward now.

I never played GW1, but I totally agree with the OP. No matter how I try to tweak the skills and traits of the Necromancer, ultimately it only has, MAYBE, 3 viable builds. Spectral skills are nearly worthless because of their lack of synergy with anything and long cooldowns, and Corruption skills are so watered down that people will just shrug them off like nothing happened. Especially any classes that have more than one way to remove conditions.

1. Well Necromancer – main problem is that the well traits are at the ENDS of 3 trait lines, so even if you want to specialize in wells, you are unable to pick up all 3 of the major traits for wells. You can’t get both life siphoning and AOE without giving up the majority Blood Magic, which would then reduce your healing. Not to mention wells have a ridiculously long cooldown for their weak effects.

2. Power/Toughness/Vitality tank, aka the Juggermancer. You basically are a massive meatshield that can’t die… but you can’t kill anything either. Necromancer’s weapon skills are geared toward conditions, so even if you have maxed power, you still won’t be putting out as much DPS as any other class (except maybe Ranger/Engineer).

3. Minion Master. It’s okay for general PvE and questing, but minions tend to be on the dumber side of BRAINDEAD. Most of the time when I attack an enemy, half my minions stand there looking around and doing nothing. They also get insta-gibbed against dungeon bosses, so once all your minions die (and they WILL DIE, and their long cooldowns hurt) and you no longer get the benefits of their life siphoning, you will die, DS or no DS. Not to mention the Death Magic trait line still sucks in general.

Necromancer is not necessarily underpowered, but instead suffers from a much greater sin: They are NOT FUN TO PLAY. It’s sad, but true. I find myself playing my ANY of my classes more than the Necromancer. Warrior, Guardian, Thief, Elementalist, and Mesmer are all so much fun to play, but I never even touch my Necromancer anymore.

Necro was the very first character I created when GW2 opened. Coming from GW1 I was extremely excited to play this class again. Unfortunately, something just didn’t feel right.

My first summon was 2 black rat-sized minions. Arguably the worst looking minion I’ve ever seen in any video game. No charm what so ever. Not only did they look and fight terribly weak, their secondary ability was to die even faster. What a first impression! Now, the minions from GW1 wasn’t pretty but it at least looked and acted more functional than this.

The weapon skill were as the OP said, meh. Needing something to look forward to, I peeked at the wiki to look at the necro skill list. All of them looked terribly uninteresting. I’m sure they’re quite functional from a gameplay point of view, but all the fun skills from GW1 were gone. Only skill I was looking forward to was the flesh golem… but I simply couldn’t stand the class enough to make it to level 30.

Fast forward months later to now. I have three level 80 characters and my necro is still level 16… Just as I’ve forgotten how awesome GW1’s necro was and decide to give it another shot, I came across this post…

Lukrath.6982:

i like the necro in gw2. bite me.

Respect your elders, boy.

CHIPS.6018

You missed the point on why we GW1 veteran necros are disappointed with GW2 necro: The GW2 necro is just like anyone else.

GW2 minions aren’t necro minions anymore. They are just summons. GW2 wells aren’t necro wells anymore. They are just nukes. A lot of other classes also have nukes. Other than numbers and effects there is absolutely nothing different between wells and, let’s say, Firestorm and other nukes.
Condition spread is just another method to deal damage or prevent damage. There is nothing really unique about that.

I can definately respect this. I totally agree that the new necromancer isn’t much like the old one. To address if they are still necros, that’s a good assessment, but only in regard to Guild Wars necromancers. Fantasy Necromancy is an idea of themetics, not function, generally one who animated the dead, etc.
An argument could be made that by all means, they should be Guild Wars necros since this is, after all, Guild Wars. However, I feel that each new game should take ideas and concepts of the old one and re-invent it. Mesmers didn’t used to summon clones… like at all. Now they do, and while it keeps in the spirit of the original profession- illusions and misdirection- it functions nothing like it.
I can definately support the desire to continue playing what you love in a new, updated way, but that playstyle already exists in a game called Guild Wars. To simply transfer that to a game with better graphics and updated abilities seems… unecessary. I’m not sure I’d see a reason to play Guild Wars 2 if it was so similar to Guild Wars 1. If I were you, I wouldn’t be playing this game, I’d play the original.
There is a reason games like Everquest continue to maintain subscribers even though there is an Everquest 2.
Additionally, the Necromancer does still maintains it’s individuality, but it is more subtle. Many classes summon but no other class has summons that stay until killed and have secondary abilities that have such a wide variety of effects. No one else can take the conditions from a single enemy and have them hit others- even conditions they didn’t create. The identity is very different from Guild Wars 1, and it’s true that certain aspects of the game are shared across many professions, but the way those aspects are used is very different.

There’s a lot of actions in GW2 that correspond to what Necros could do in GW1.

A GW1 BiP Necro was energy management. In GW2, energy management (except thief) is done through cooldowns. A GW2 Necro could have a trait that reduces allies CD’s. Now see how many people want necros on teams.

GW1 Curses/hexes did 2 things. It gave the opponent a choice. Choices were clear the hex or wait till it ended or ignore the curse/hex and take damage. GW2 already has this feature, it’s called confusion, something GW2 necro doesn’t have access to. (except by firing projectiles through spectral wall)

The GW1 lifestealing necro was the true attrition class that the Anet devs say the GW2 necro should be. A combo of life steal skills and hexes from GW1 are already in GW2. You should be able to trait your necro to combine lifesteal and retaliation/confusion. This would make a GW2 necro the attrition class it was supposed to be.

As for minions, in GW1 the target of a MM also had a choice, attack the minions or attack the necro. The karka hatchlings can be an example of what necro minions could be like. Have necro minions go to the target and latch on them. Trait the minions to apply blindness, weakness or cripple. Stronger minions could apply stuns/knockbacks/daze/immobilize. A MM necro could use minions in power or cond builds and they could be used to help the necro escape, at least a single target. The necro should have skills/traits that have multiple uses across multiple builds.

The GW1 necro had disease, an ability to hit multiple players. You could make something similar in GW2 if there was a trait that made wells target based, not ground based. Plague form is mobile GTAoE, wells could also do the same. This way the opponent couldn’t escape the affects of the well. In PvP you’d see people scatter as the red circle kept moving at them.

crazyace I play different builds and variations of builds on my necro almost every time I log in. saying we have 3 builds is not right. conditions, support, power and hybrid. each have many different builds within those types. I would say we have the best build diversity in game.